Say Cheese

10 things you never knew about Sydney

221 metre long pizza lines, Crocodile Dundee and more...

1 – 30% of Sydney’s population speak a language other than English at home. Other commonly spoken languages include Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Greek and Vietnamese.

2 – The Sydney Harbour Bridge was painted grey originally because there was no other colour of paint available in such quantities. The first coast of paint for the bridge came to a mahoosive 272 thousand litres.

3 – In 2008 a 221 metre long line of pizza in Sydney’s Italian quarter broke the Guinness world record. 826 freshly made pizzas took part in the campaign. We hope most were eaten afterwards!

4 – Jorn Utzon, the Sydney Opera House architect, created the original designs as part of an international design competition. He resigned from the final build of the project before its completion.

5 – Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Babe: Pig in the City, The Great Gatsby and Independence Day all had scenes shot in and around Sydney.

6 – Australia’s first police force was a band of 12 of the most well behaved convicts.

7 – Paul Hogan (AKA Crocodile Dundee) worked as a painter on the Sydney Harbour Bridge before landing his career breaking crock wrestling role.

8 – After phasing out the Australian 1 and 2 cent coins in 1991, they were then melted down and used in the Sydney 2000 Olympics as Bronze Medals.

9 – The Sydney funnel web spider has fangs larger than a brown snakes fangs. Without treatment, human death has been known to occur within 15 minutes of being bitten.

10 – Bondi Beach holds the record for the largest ever swimsuit photo shoot. In September 2007, a 1010 bikini clad crew took part in a cosmopolitan magazine shoot on Bondi beach.